


this place is too tender (for now, anyway)

by sleepdeprivedsurgeon



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, Canon Non-Binary Character, Communication, Dissociation, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Juno Steel and the Lack of Communication Skills, Juno Steel and the Uh Oh! Time to Revisit Some Trauma!, Multi, Nightmares, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Past Drug Addiction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Trans Peter Nureyev, author is bad at coming up with aliases please don't be mean to him, both Peter and Juno are AFAB, fuck sarah steel all my homies hate sarah steel, not relevant to this fic at all i just wanted to point that out, period-typical homophobia but the period is the future and there is no homophobia, season 3 of tpp is what oceans 11 wishes it was
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:01:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27518818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepdeprivedsurgeon/pseuds/sleepdeprivedsurgeon
Summary: So he keeps a lot of himself hidden. He shoves his wedding dress in a box and puts the box in the back of his closet. He plays off his refusal to take painkillers when he’s injured as some kind of martyrdom. He doesn’t let himself flinch when someone raises their voice or closes a door too suddenly; the muscles in his back and shoulders are a tangled mass of tension as a result, but it’s better than looking broken in front of the other crew members. In front of Nureyev. He deals with the nightmares on his own, the way he’s been doing it for years.[Juno Steel can handle himself. Until he has a couple bad days and a heist goes wrong and suddenly he can't anymore.]
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Diamond/Juno Steel, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 57
Kudos: 227





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from "healing ritual" by whatever, dad  
> additional trigger warnings in the chapter notes!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back with another fic that is like exactly the same as my last one but with more plot and juno gets some comfort/resolution  
> tw for references to past child abuse/domestic abuse with a hint of suicidal ideation

This, this is exactly the reason Juno always goes back to his own room after spending the evening with Nureyev. He lies flat on his back, willing his chest up and down, his lungs to expand and contract, fighting off the shaking hands and blood on the edges of his vision that come with waking up from a nightmare. He’d woken up screaming, like always, but after thirty-nine years he’s gotten good at keeping himself quiet, slamming a hand over his mouth or burying his face in a pillow until he comes back into reality.  
It’s the same thing every night: his childhood bedroom, covered wall-to-wall in blood. Hands— he could never tell who they belonged to— that grabbed him and wouldn’t let him go. The head-splitting whine of the THEIA drowning out his thoughts. Sarah Steel’s spun-out smile. It all blends together at a fever pitch that leaves Juno gasping for breath, his sheets and skin covered in a thin layer of cold sweat. He’ll lie there, shaking, telling himself over and over that the footsteps in the hallway are Jet’s, that the shadow on the wall isn’t someone coming towards him. Eventually he’ll give up on trying to calm down, and he’ll pace the length of his room until he hears people talking somewhere in the ship, nails digging into his arms.  
Tonight, though, it's especially bad; the kind of bad that he knows is going to leak into the rest of his day. He doesn't know what distinguishes the bad nights from the regularly-terrifying nights. Figuring it out isn't really his priority, though, when it's taking everything in him not to scream again, to stumble through the Carte Blanche turning all the lights on and making sure he can see what everyone's hands are doing, all the time. For a split second, he wishes he had someone else to help him fight off the urge, but that kind of thing comes with so many caveats and clauses (they'd ask what he'd been dreaming about, and they'd have to be willing to be woken up in the middle of the night, every night, like clockwork) that he dismisses it before it's even had time to become a full thought.  
Nureyev has only asked him to spend the night a couple times in the months they’ve spent together. Every time it’s been open, tentative, and every time he’s let Juno leave. He seems to understand that they’re both more than a little uneasy at the idea of inhabiting the same space— between Nureyev’s long history of living alone and Juno’s long history of living with people who made sure he never left the house without a cracked rib or three, the idea of sleeping in separate rooms is a welcome one. Sure, they trust each other. Sure, he trusts Nureyev. Lately he’s been trusting a lot of people, for better or for worse. But everyone Juno’s ever been with has gotten tired of him eventually. He wears people down. He breaks down every other day, and he picks fights, and he runs his mouth until all anyone wants to do is shut him up. He knows Nureyev has the best intentions, that he’s not planning on hurting him, but he also knows that will change. It always does. And he likes what they have right now; the relative peace, the warm evenings and slow mornings. He’ll do anything to keep it going for as long as possible.  
So he keeps a lot of himself hidden. He shoves his wedding dress in a box and puts the box in the back of his closet. He plays off his refusal to take painkillers when he’s injured as some kind of martyrdom. He doesn’t let himself flinch when someone raises their voice or closes a door too suddenly; the muscles in his back and shoulders are a tangled mass of tension as a result, but it’s better than looking broken in front of the other crew members. In front of Nureyev. He deals with the nightmares on his own, the way he’s been doing it for years.  
Footsteps, hollow against the metal floors of the Carte Blanche, sound just outside his door. He bitterly reminds himself that whoever it is doesn’t even plan on coming in, much less hurting him. Nights like this are just one long string of reminders, and they start out gentle, sure, but there’s only so far gentle goes. By the end of the night he’ll be screaming at himself. ‘There’s no one there, Steel. Sarah’s dead and Diamond’s rotting back on Mars. Go the fuck to sleep.’  
It’s exhausting. By the time the ship’s automatic lights flicker on, pushing a flat square of light under Juno’s door, he’s more tired than he had been before he went to sleep. He’s not about to make it anyone else’s problem, though. He puts on his eyepatch and a clean shirt, wills his hands to stop shaking. He’s a sharpshooter, goddamnit, even if his aim is skewed now. Juno Steel, private-eye-turned-criminal, isn’t scared. Not in a way that anyone would be able to notice, anyhow. Juno Steel talks fast and shoots faster, and he’s got the most reliable moral compass in the galaxy. A lady like that doesn’t spend his time flinching away from shadows on his bedroom wall. He takes a deep breath and opens his door.

The kitchen is crowded. It’s noisy, and the sound of Vespa’s coffee mug colliding with the table, Jet’s boots on the hollow floors, the kettle boiling, it all makes Juno wish there were more places to hide on the Carte Blanche. He knows he’s hiding it well, though. Besides their skill, their bones to pick with major pharmaceutical companies, and their need for some kind of family, everyone on Buddy Aurinko’s crew has one thing in common: they’re all excellent at hiding whatever they’re feeling. Nureyev is the only one who’s managed to hone it into a skill, an identity, but they all have custom-fit masks they put on with their socks and gun holsters every morning. Which is probably why Buddy’s become so good at cutting straight through all their bullshit, Juno thinks as he pours coffee into the biggest cup on the ship. They’re united in the fact that Buddy is the first person ever, or at least in a very long time, who’s been able to see under all the wisecracks or flattery or misplaced anger. Which is why Juno tries to avoid her after a particularly bad night, like this night had been.  
He sits next to Peter, who is eating cereal with one hand and scrolling through a blueprint on his comms with the other. He stops the second he notices Juno, though. That part of their relationship has taken a lot of getting used to: the attention. No one’s ever gave a shit about him before. And, for the most part, that ability to fly under the radar has worked out to his advantage. Now that Nureyev’s taken it away, he doesn’t know how to respond.  
“Good morning, love. How did you sleep?”  
“Uh, fine. Same as always.” It’s not a lie, really. His night had been going great until the nightmares started.  
Nureyev purses his lips and runs his thumb along Juno’s eyebrow, cupping his face with his hand. He keeps his nails short and he repaints them every week. The color depends on who he’s pretending to be. Or who he is— Juno’s still not sure how much separation there is between Peter and his aliases. Sometimes it scares him. Most of the time, he’s grateful that they only have a certain number of hours every day to be themselves around each other. Otherwise Nureyev would get tired of him too quickly. He’d have snapped already, and Juno would already be back to spending his evenings patching himself up on the bathroom floor. The way it’s going now, though, he reckons they have a few more months before it all dissolves. And he plans on taking advantage of every second.  
“You look tired,” Peter says quietly, his voice a little closer to what Juno had heard in his memory on Brahma. His voice, like a lot of things about him, is a lie practiced so often it became the truth, but there are moments where it’s thin enough to see through.  
Juno leans into his touch, and leans in for a kiss. “You don’t have to worry about me.”  
“I’m not sure how true that is, but—”  
“Are you two really doing this at nine in the fucking morning?” Vespa growls.  
Juno’s pulled away, moved his chair to create as much space between him and the thief as possible at the cramped kitchen table, before she’s even finished her sentence. He can’t set anyone off today, can’t call too much attention to himself. He stares firmly at his coffee and waits for a sign that everyone’s moved on and forgotten about him. Nureyev’s hand snakes under the table to rest on his knee, but he must feel the way Juno tenses under his fingers, because he pulls back after a moment and goes back to his blueprint.  
He drinks his coffee, wishes he’d thought to put some whiskey in it before he sat down, and reminds himself: no, Vespa’s shouting isn’t going to end with her breaking his nose. Jet is big, but he’s soft, and when he walks behind Juno it’s to get to the fridge, not because he knows he’s in his blind spot. And Nureyev isn’t going to hurt him, even when his hands move a little too fast or he raises his voice to be heard over the commotion at the table, not even when it takes him three tries to get Juno to hear what he’s saying, and even then Juno can’t manage more than a one-word answer. The reminders start out gentle, but he gets sick of himself even faster than other people. By the end of breakfast he’s ready to shock all the nervousness out of him with a blaster shot between the eyes. But between the people counting on him and the fact that he doesn’t want to die anymore, that’s not an option. He spends the day in the cargo hold instead, using empty crates for target practice. At least no one else is down there with him.  
He doesn’t emerge until the family evening, late in the afternoon, and he spends the whole time calculating how fast he could get to the door, taking inventory of everything he could use as a shield. There’s no way he’d make it out of the room unscathed if someone got mad at him, so he finds an excuse to leave the meeting early. Says he’s sick. Says he’s going to start cooking dinner. Says he’s sitting this heist out, anyway, so why the hell does he need to be there for every meeting. Every time he doesn’t get the seat by the door, he comes up with a reason to leave. Thankfully, even in a room full of thieves, no one’s noticed the pattern yet. He doesn’t know what he’d do if someone did.  
Hours later (hours that he barely remembers passing), he climbs out of Nureyev’s bed and pulls on one of the discarded shirts on the floor. He’s not sure whose it is, but they’ve reached the point where there’s a lot of overlap between the things they own.  
“You can stay, you know,” Peter says. His voice has a different pitch when he’s tired, and a little bit of a lilt. Juno is in love with it. He’s in love with all of him, but there’s a collection of things he keeps especially close to his heart. It’s almost enough to make him stay. He could get back in bed and wrap his arms around the other man, tell him why he’d been going back across the hall every night, and promise to be as quiet as he could.  
“I know. I’ll get there eventually.”  
“Take your time.” He smiles, but there’s a tightness to it. Juno understands. He knows that every night is a reminder of the first time he left Nureyev alone in bed. There’s an underlying fear in everything they do: Nureyev’s fear of being stood up, Juno’s fear of being backhanded. Juno doesn’t think they’ll ever get past that, partially because he doesn’t want to. The second he lets his guard down is always the second something goes wrong. Whenever Sarah would ease off for a few days, it was because she was sitting on even more anger than usual, waiting for it to boil over. Diamond was always sickly-sweet to him after their worst fights, and he’d let it win him over for years. He knows better than to trust a gift, or to settle into a silence. Nureyev is the same. And if it’s only ever worked to their benefit, why would either of them stop?  
“I love you,” Juno says, because he does, and because he knows Peter needs to hear it. Then he crosses the hallway, lies down on top of the sheets, and waits for it to start all over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i need comments to survive please tell me what you think!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for addiction/alcoholism
> 
> *slaps juno steel* this lady can fit so many bad coping mechanisms

He honestly thought it’d be easier in space. Away from all the people and places on Mars that had been constantly trying to pull him back down to rock bottom, surrounded by people who cared about him, it should be a simple thing, getting through the day.   
It isn’t. He’s walking on eggshells around himself, trying not to think to hard about what he’s doing (crime— real crime, not the Oldtown petty theft he’d spent his childhood perfecting), or where he’s come from (Oldtown-turned-Newtown, the city he no longer recognizes), or who he’s with (Peter Nureyev, the man who’s so good at manipulation and sleight-of-hand that if he decided to strike, Juno wouldn’t have time to defend himself). The last time he got a good night’s sleep he was a toddler, but since joining the Aurinkos he’s lucky if he gets two hours a night. None of that’s the problem, though. Not right now, anyway.  
The problem is that there’s a cupboard in the infirmary filled to the brim with narcotics, and it’s never locked. The problem is he can’t stand still, he’s been pacing the length of the cargo hold for the past twenty minutes and no matter how fast he goes, it’s not enough to make it stop. He’s supposed to be taking inventory, there’s a half-filled chart open on his comms and everything, but everything he’s got is going towards telling himself that he quit, he quit, goddamnit, he’s been clean for too long and gotten himself through too many bad days to lose it all just because he’s tired. It’s been almost a decade since he’d taken anything, and there’s too many people who are counting on him, who are proud of how far he’s come. Get it together, Steel.  
But it’d be so fucking easy. He’s always scared, lately, the kind of scared that starts in his bones and radiates outward. It sits in the pit of his stomach, rises into his throat whenever Nureyev talks with his hands too much, or Buddy looks a little angrier than usual, threatens to choke him. Sometimes his shoulders twitch or his muscles tense involuntarily and he can’t help thinking, maybe it’s still there, maybe it never really left, and he spends the next hour reciting the names of everyone he knows under his breath just to make sure he can still remember them. He can tell himself that it’s not worth it as much as he wants; it won’t change the fact that, right now, it is worth it. Right now, he’d give just about anything to stop being scared. Juno is scared. He’s tired. He wants to be making notes of how much fuel and food they have left, but instead he’s wearing trenches in the floor of the ship with how much he’s pacing. When he thinks about it, he knows that anything Vespa has is temporary— that he’ll come down a few hours later and have to choose between taking more or telling Rita to set the “days that Juno Steel has been sober” tracker on her comms back to zero. With the way he’s been feeling lately he doesn’t trust himself to make the right decision if it comes down to that. Hell, he doesn’t trust himself to make the right decision right now.   
So he does the one thing he can do. He throws his comms onto a nearby shelf and heads up the stairs. He gets to the kitchen before the infirmary, and that’s really the only thing that stops him. He pulls a bottle of scotch off the shelf by the fridge. It’s not the worst thing he could possibly do. This was part of the uneasy agreement he had with himself, and Rita, and Mick, and everyone else who cared about him. He went to rehab. He flushed every pill, including the ones he’d been hiding. He left everyone who told him it wasn’t worth it behind. But he knew he couldn’t give up everything, not when he sees blood every time he closes his eyes. So he hasn’t taken any pills or shot up in upwards of ten years. But every once in a while the urge gets a little to strong to ignore, and he takes a full bottle of whatever’s least likely to be missed back down the stairs with him. By the time Nureyev calls down that dinner’s ready, it’s more than halfway gone. But the inventory’s done. He’s a little less scared than he had been before. It’s a compromise; one with very few consequences, because he has time to stop by his room and stash the bottle under his bed, and if he learned one thing during his time in the HCPD it was how to hide drunkenness in front of his coworkers.   
Coworkers is all the other Aurinkos are, really. Buddy can say what she wants about family, and hell, sometimes Juno even lets himself believe her, but honestly the more distant he can keep himself from the other crew members, the better he feels. Families have a short shelf life in his experience. They dissolve into a collection of slamming doors and broken collarbones too quickly. Diamond had always said that they were family. “Where are you gonna go, J? I’m the only family you’re ever gonna get.”  
Juno slides into his chair and eats as much as he’s able while talking as little as he can. He’s next to Rita, which is good, because her voice put him a little more at ease, and she’s the only person he trusts to sit in his blind spot. It’s bad, though, because there’s only one person he can’t hide anything from. She notices all his warning signs too easily. She cares about him— someone has to— and that means he can only show a certain number of red flags before she decides to do something about it. “Doing something” in this case would mean telling Buddy, and telling Buddy would mean that the captain would know about another one of Juno’s many, many weaknesses. He can’t have that. So he eats his dinner, and tries his best to make his silence seem like he’s just lost in thought.  
There’s conversation and movement all around him, closing in on all sides, but it’s too fuzzy to make out. Usually that would terrify him. Right now he’s almost enjoying it; it’s a welcome change from the usual hypervigilance. Slowly, sleepily, he realizes Nureyev is saying something.  
“S-sorry, what? I was, uh, you know.” He makes a vague gesture, and Nureyev understands. Spacing out. Somewhere else. Dissociating, if he’s gonna call it what that HCPD-ordered therapist he had for a month after Benten’s murder called it. That’s the real secret to faking sobriety. If you have a bad enough grip on reality, no one notices when you let go on purpose.  
“I just asked how your afternoon was.”  
Juno blinks a couple times. “It was fine. Inventory’s easy.”  
“I’m surprised you can count,” Vespa cuts in from across the table.  
“Hey, who almost cost us our last job because you couldn’t read a goddamn clock?”  
“At least I’m not—”  
“Girls, please.” Buddy takes her place at the head of the table.   
So Juno falls back into silence. Under the table, Nureyev’s hand finds his, thin fingers settling on top of the scars on his knuckles, thumb rubbing circles into his palm. He does this whenever Juno’s… lost in thought. Spaced out. Somewhere else. Usually it helps bring him back. Tonight, Nureyev couldn’t bring him back if he tried, but it feels nice anyway. He’s got soft hands. Juno doesn’t look at him, but he smiles, and he knows that he sees it. He keeps it up all through dinner, and when it’s over he leads Juno down the hallway like that, towards their quarters.

The second they’re inside Nureyev’s room, Juno is falling into him, half because he wants to and half because he doesn’t want to keep himself upright anymore. Nureyev pulls him back, though, holds him at arms length, fingers wrapped around his shoulders. Juno remembers being held like this, remembers it well, and he thinks, at least he’s not sober for it. He thinks it might break him if he were sober. But now, it’s just kind of funny, in an inevitable sort of way. Juno Steel, king of the unlucky lovers, he broke another one. He tenses, but it’s more to keep the laughter in than it is to prepare himself for whatever Nureyev’s about to do— hit him, or yell at him, or whatever. It could be anything. That wouldn’t change the fact that it’s the joke of the century.  
“Juno, what’s wrong?”  
The blow doesn’t come. The laughter dies in his throat. “Hm? What do you mean?”  
“The past few days… you look like you haven’t slept, and you’re either on edge or you’re not here at all. I know there are things you don’t want to- to talk about, with me, and you obviously don’t owe me any explanations, but… I just want to know how I can help, darling.”  
“Oh.” Juno looks around the room. He loves Nureyev’s room; he always prefers clutter to empty space, and he likes looking at all the diagrams and fake IDs taped to the walls, and the whole place smells like his cologne. If he were less of a coward he’d sleep here every night, and maybe he wouldn’t even wake up screaming.  
“Juno? Are you—”  
“I don’t know.” He stumbles over his words; some of them stick together, others come out too far apart. “If I knew what you could do, I’d tell you, I think. But shit, I don’t even know what’s wrong. Everything’s… bad.” He moves Nureyev’s hands off his shoulders, surprised at how little resistance the thief puts up, and rests his head against his chest. “Everything’s bad.”  
“I’m sorry, love.”  
He just shrugs. He doesn’t feel up to doing anything else. Eventually they pull apart and face each other in the middle of the cluttered room, Nureyev staring at Juno, Juno staring at the empty outside the window.   
“I think I’m just gonna go to bed.”  
“All right.” Nureyev kisses his forehead, hands barely brushing his waist before he pulls away. He’s being careful; he’s walking on eggshells. Juno knows the feeling. “You’ll let me know if you need anything?”  
“Yeah. Yeah. I love you.”  
“I love you, too.”  
As he stumbles back to the door, avoiding piles of shirts and blueprints, some of the fear creeps back in. He doesn’t like that his back is to Nureyev, doesn’t like the blind spot. At least he hid the rest of the scotch back in his room, so he won’t have to fall asleep like this.   
Rita catches him on his way across the hall. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at him and gives him a few seconds to make the first move. To tell her she’s fired, or ask her to come watch a stream with him, or even just acknowledge the fact that he looks like shit and feels worse. She’d be willing to listen to anything, or do anything, or even just sit in the room with him— god knows she’s done it all before. And something about that scares Juno. Well, something about everything scares Juno. But as much as he trusts Rita, trusts her with things he’d never tell anyone, the one thing he can’t stomach is people who are too willing to give him things. Give him time, give him space, give him anything. He’s seen gifts turn into weapons too often.   
He doesn’t make the first move. He gives her a smile that’s supposed to be reassuring but comes out crooked and cynical, and he falls through the door to his room. The worst part of getting better is that a year ago, something like this wouldn’t make him feel guilty. It would just be part of being Juno Steel. Now, he feels like maybe he should’ve said something more to Nureyev, or anything to Rita. He can’t help but feel a little bad.  
But he sits on the floor and unscrews the bottle cap. No matter how bad he feels, he’s got a surefire way to feel a little better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment! lemme know if there's anything u guys wanna see in the upcoming chapters (i promise it's a juno recovery story i just like watching my comfort characters hit rock bottom)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the summary for this chapter is: the new ep gave me buddy and juno content and i latched onto it harder than i've ever latched onto anything in my life.  
> also! gonna edit earlier notes & start including triggers at the beginning of each chapter because shit gets real heavy real fast in the upcoming chapters and i don't want anyone to be caught off-guard.  
> triggers for this chapter include:  
> \- detailed descriptions of dissociation  
> \- references to past domestic abuse  
> \- guns

There are times where days or weeks go by and Juno doesn’t even notice. It happens less often than it used to— he’s got fewer reasons to check out, and now that he’s (mostly) sober there’s not much helping him detach himself from reality. But it hasn’t stopped completely. Every once in a while he’ll stop in the middle of whatever he’s doing and realize he’s been on autopilot for the last several hours, that he’s been wading around in knee-deep water inside his own head and everything around him looks a little blurrier than it’s supposed to be.  
It happens in the middle of a meeting. He looks up from the crack in the tabletop he’s been staring at and it suddenly occurs to him that he hasn’t heard a goddamn thing Buddy’s been saying. She’s going over the plan for tomorrow’s heist— they’re stealing some paintings from an auction on Venus. They need the money they’ll get from selling them, and the people they’re robbing are the kind of people who either won’t notice or won’t care if a couple masterpieces go missing. The security is lax, at least compared to their last couple jobs. It’s easy. In and out. He reminds himself of all of this, and tries his best to focus on what Buddy’s talking about: something about the layout of the storage room their targets are kept in, the lock system that’s being used. He blinks a few times and digs his nails into his thighs. It always takes a lot of effort to pull himself out of this; it’s always easier to convince himself it isn’t worth it. What time is it? He glances at his comms: four pm. The last thing he really remembers is getting dressed this morning. Shit.   
He looks back at Buddy, but she’s stopped talking. Everyone is getting up to leave, brushing past him on their way out the meeting room door in a way that sets his teeth on edge. He stands up and tries to ignore the fact that he feels like he’s looking at the world through a thick layer of glass.  
Rita is waiting for him in the hall, and follows him towards his room.  
“Are you alright, Mr. Steel?” she stage-whispers. “You looked a little… you know, back there. I took notes for ya.”  
“I’m fine. I’m— thanks.”   
“D’you wanna come watch a stream or somethin’?”  
For a second, he lets himself hate it. Hate that Rita looks after him like it’s second nature (because it is, at this point), and hate that Sarah’s been gone for twenty years and Diamond for twelve and he still can’t move on, every little thing sets him off, spacing out or spiraling. Then he gives Rita a tired smile, because if he’s not gonna move on then he doesn’t wanna move at all, and spending the rest of the night lying on the floor rewatching a shitty movie seems like a pretty good way to spend his motionless time.  
Rita launches into a debate with herself over what they’re going to watch. Juno listens— not to what she’s saying, exactly, but to the way her voice rises and falls, the pauses between some of her words, the familiar rhythm of the way she talks. It’s nice. Slowly— too slowly, in his opinion, what’s he going to do if someone gets angry, his reaction time is nonexistent— he feels himself start to come back, flexing his fingers, watching the stream and actually realizing what’s going on. The main character’s built some kind of robot android thing, they’re showing her off at an exhibition. She opens her mouth to speak and

He’s in the shower, and he must’ve been standing there for a while, because the water’s ice cold and someone’s banging on the door. Where the hell has he been? How long has he been there? He shuts the water off. It must be Vespa at the door, because the banging’s still going strong. That’s okay, though. Even though they fight constantly, she’s the one person on the Carte Blanche that Juno isn’t scared of. Maybe it’s because they’re always fighting— she’s not making any attempts to give him a false sense of security. Not like Nureyev. Juno curses and pulls his t-shirt over his head. Shut up, Steel. Nureyev’s not going to hurt him. Not for a while, anyway.  
Sure enough, Vespa’s waiting for him when he opens the bathroom door, glaring down at him like she’s waiting for the right moment to pull her knife. But he knows she’s not. So he gives her a smile that he knows will make her even angrier and walks toward the kitchen. He doesn’t remember eating today— not that his memory means anything, he doesn’t remember anything about today, but it couldn’t hurt.   
It had been a lot worse a decade and a half ago, when he was still at the HCPD. He doesn’t remember the two months after Ben died. There had been a long stretch where he was late to work, if he showed up at all, because he’d start looking for the car keys and then it would be three days later and he’d be sitting in the middle of the bedroom floor and he still wouldn’t know where the keys were. Hijikata only kept him around because of his aim, in those days. He remembers Diamond snapping him out of it, more often than not, their nails digging into his upper arms: “look at me, I’m fucking talking to you.”  
It takes him a good five minutes of staring into the fridge to remember why he’s there, and how he got there, and what he’s looking for. Then, it takes another couple minutes of looking at the plate of leftovers for him to realize he’s not hungry. He slams the fridge in frustration. It’s eleven-thirty. Has he even talked to anyone today, besides that conversation with Rita? Nureyev probably thinks he’s ignoring him. He’s probably going to be mad about it. Juno presses his forehead against the fridge door, harder and harder, trying to feel the pressure and the cool plastic.  
“The handle’s on the side, darling. I’m sure you can find it if you look a little harder.”  
He turns around with an embarrassingly startled noise to see Buddy, leaning against the counter opposite him, a nearly-empty glass in her hand and the same impossible dress and no-nonsense look in her eyes that she always has.   
“I— sorry, I—”  
She raises an eyebrow and walks out of the kitchen, heels ringing against the metal floors. When she’s halfway down the hallway, she pauses: “Well, are you coming?”  
Juno swallows hard. “Uh, yeah.”  
Buddy leads him down to their makeshift shooting range. She wordlessly starts setting up the targets, and Juno’s too confused to point out that they’re four days and several hours off schedule. Then she hands him a blaster. He stares at it, and then her.  
“Fine, I’ll go first,” she says with a sigh.  
He watches her hit bullseye after bullseye, watches the concentration etch itself into her face. The noise from the shots ricochets off the walls, and after a few seconds the room is filled with the burning smell of plasma. He cocks his own gun and joins her, focusing in on the targets and the feeling of the blaster [kicking back] against his hand, the familiar burn in his shoulders after a couple rounds. He keeps going even after he hears Buddy stop. It’s… nice. It’s too loud to think about anything except the next shot, and thinking about that takes up so much of his attention that after a while he’s back in the outside world again, and he can feel his hands again, feel the heat radiating off his gun and the slight ache in his trigger finger.  
When he finally lowers his blaster and looks back at Buddy, she’s sitting on a stack of crates in the corner, wearing a satisfied smile that he thinks he might have gotten a little too used to over these last few months.  
“Feeling any better, darling?” she asks.  
Juno doesn’t know how to respond. Because, yeah, he feels better. Of course he does. But saying that would mean admitting he’d been feeling bad in the first place, and he can’t give Buddy something else to add to the very long list of Juno Steel’s known weaknesses, of reasons he shouldn’t be here, of potential liabilities.  
“Sure,” he says carefully.  
“Good. Now go get some rest. We have work to do tomorrow.”   
He walks back to his room, listening to the hum of the engines and the metal creaking of the walls. He spends a few moments in front of Nureyev’s door, looking at the light leaking out from his room. Almost everything in Juno is telling him to knock on the door, apologize for the way he’s been lately, and ask if there’s a way he can make it up to him. He’s not really in the mood for… anything, but he could be, if Peter asked, if it would make up for refusing to spend the night with him for five months running and not paying attention to a single thing he said or did all day. But when he weighs his options, ignoring him all day and then interrupting his last-minute heist preparations seemed like a bigger risk than just going to bed. So that’s what he does instead; he goes to his own room, and reads over the notes Rita gave him until he can’t stay awake. Then he closes his eyes and waits for the nightmares to kick in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please drop a comment i need the validation  
> also! my tumblr and tiktok have the same username as this account if you wanna hang out :)  
> okay sorry for the shameless self-promos uhh hope you enjoyed because it's literally only downhill from here


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so this fic is now an au instead of just a headcanon, because we found out in the last episode (spoiler) that diamond left juno, but i had already outlined this whole story based around juno leaving diamond and i'm not gonna change it. i did, however, change diamond's pronouns to she/her because that's what juno uses in the new episode. idk if anyone cares but i just wanted to address it :)  
> trigger warnings for this chapter:  
> \- body shaming (weight and scars)  
> \- references to past domestic abuse  
> -references to past suicide attempt(s)  
> \- gaslighting  
> \- non-consensual touch (non-sexual)

“If you want this to look good, detective, you’re going to have to sit still.”  
“I thought you said I looked good without the makeup.”  
“You know that wasn’t what I meant.”  
Nureyev is straddling Juno’s lap, his shirt open and his tie untied, hovering over Juno’s eye with an eyeliner brush. This had been one of the things that annoyed Juno about the missing eye, at first, until the first time Nureyev had volunteered to help, the first time they’d spent the morning in this exact position: Peter half-dressed and climbing over Juno to get a good angle, and Juno sitting back and enjoying the view. In moments like this he forgets about the inevitable, the argument looming on the horizon that will end with Juno in the infirmary. Well, he almost forgets. Peter grabs his face to keep it still and it takes everything in him not to flinch away. But his grip is soft, and there’s a smile on his face without a hint of malice to it, so after a second Juno relaxes into the touch.  
“Nervous?” Peter asks.  
“About the heist? Not really. In-and-out, like you said. Besides, you’re doing all the real work. All I have to do is flirt with a security guard for a couple minutes.”  
“Try to do a better job than you did with me.”  
“Hey, I can be charming.”  
Peter smiles. “I wouldn’t know.”  
“I did a good enough job that you asked me to run away with you the first night we met. And, not for nothing, I’d say you were pretty charmed two nights ago when I—”  
“Fine, you have your moments, I’ll give you that. Now close your eye.”  
Juno obliges, holding back laughter. He could stay here for a while, if they had the time— his eyes closed, and Nureyev sitting there less than an inch away from him, his hands on his face and in his hair. It’s a cold day in hell when Juno Steel lets himself get too comfortable, but right now, shit, the weather’s gotta be changing at least a little down there.  
“Beautiful,” Nureyev says, pulling his hands away. “You’re beautiful.”  
“That’s a pretty strong word.”  
“I know. That’s why I used it.” He starts buttoning his shirt, but he doesn’t move. Juno watches him for a while, then turns his gaze out the window, at the fast-approaching mansions of Callisto. He doesn’t know how the rest of the Aurinkos do it— how they blend in so seamlessly among the galaxy’s most rich and powerful. Nureyev doesn’t just disappear into this kind of crowd, he manages to place himself in the middle of it without anyone suspecting a thing. If Juno tried to do that someone would shoot him, probably. Sure, he has experience; he spent a good portion of his twenties in the Kanagawa twins’ inner circle, and Diamond had dragged him to his fair share of parties and galas and shit. (Maybe that’s what makes him nervous about this kind of thing. He doesn’t want to think about it, though). But back then, he’d always known where he stood. He had a place as the plus-one or the girlfriend. The fact that he’d been high off his ass at every function had helped with the anxiety, too. Now, he’s going in alone and sober, and he has to admit it scares him a little.  
Nureyev must notice him losing himself in thought, because he hooks a finger under Juno’s chin and steers his gaze away from the window and towards his face. “Look at me.”  
Juno grins, the memories of Hyperion City suddenly forgotten again. “Oh, I’m looking.” He takes it in: the pointed teeth that stick out over his bottom lip a little when he’s not paying attention, the deep brown eyes lined in gold, the sharp lines and dark contours and cunning smiles that made up Peter Nureyev.  
“This job is going to be over in a few hours. More importantly, detective, the second that it is, we’re going to come back here and I’m going to—”  
The door slides open and a pair of heels click towards them. “Are Mx. and Mrs. Roi ready for… is this a bad time?” Buddy stands over them with the gentle expectation she always conducts herself with.  
Peter climbs off of Juno a little less gracefully than either of them would have liked. “Not at all, Captain.”  
“Good. Even if had been, it wouldn’t have mattered. Jet is waiting for you two in the Ruby7 whenever you’re ready.”  
“We’re ready,” Nureyev says. “Aren’t we, detective?” He holds his hand out, and Juno takes it gratefully.  
“Of course.” He stands up and smooths out his suit. It’s a simple job, he reminds himself. In and out. Nothing’s going to go wrong.

Jet climbs out of the Ruby7 and holds the back door open for them. Nureyev steps into the Callisto winter first, extending his arm for Juno. He’s glad for it; the sight of all the people is enough to make him a little unsteady on his feet. By the time they reach the front steps, though, he’s got an acceptably firm hold on his composure. Nureyev’s voice is low and smooth in his ear, reminding him one more time of the plan, and again he feels a warm rush of gratitude for the man at his side.  
“We go in, we’re announced. We make our way back to the gallery as quick as possible, but we stop for a drink so that no one gets too suspicious. There’s only one security guard in there, and they’re stationed in front of the storeroom for the art that’s not on display.”  
“Imagine hoarding so much shit you can’t even display all of it,” Juno mutters through the smile he’s put on.  
“Moral implications aside, I ask if we can see the storeroom, and, because I’m good at my job, they’ll let us in. Then you ask about a piece towards the front, and distract them long enough for me to help myself to a couple small but incredibly expensive paintings, and then we rejoin the party, stay until the auction, and then we see ourselves out.”  
“Got it.”  
By the time Peter finishes they’re already inside. The foyer ceiling looks like it stretches higher than the dome above Hyperion; Juno can’t even make out what’s painted on it. Everyone around him is wearing something that looks like it cost at least three months’ rent for anyone else in the city. There’s something to be happy about: at least this isn’t the city he grew up in. Looking at all the gold and champagne and private security, it’s easy to convince himself he’s light years away from Oldtown instead of just miles. He really is, in more ways than one.  
A tall man in a tuxedo and bright blue glasses announces their alias to the room, and the second that follows feels like decades. There’s too many eyes on them. Suddenly Juno can’t shake the feeling that someone’s going to recognize him, walk up to him and drag all of the most unpleasant parts of himself out into the open for everyone to look at. A waiter walks by with a tray of champagne glasses, and he’s finished one and gulped down half of another before he has time to even think about what he’s doing.  
“Juno,” Buddy crackles through his earpiece. “I understand the sentiment, darling, but take it easy. You’re calling attention to yourself, and believe it or not, inebriation isn’t actually helpful in the world of high-stakes crime.”  
“Right. Sorry.” He takes another deep breath and wills himself forward, following Nureyev’s sharp smile through the massive foyer and into hallway after hallway lined with artwork that costs too much and people who cost even more. It’s simple, he tells himself. Straightforward. He can hold a conversation with a security guard for five goddamn minutes. Compared to the other jobs he’s held, roles he’s had, this is nothing.  
They turn a corner into a room with dark green walls that are hardly visible between the gold frames. “These guys really, really like their paintings,” Juno says under his breath. “Where’s the mark?”  
Nureyev nods toward a small door in the corner, on the other side of the small crowd that’s gathered in the gallery, and suddenly Juno can’t breathe, like his lungs are frozen over or something. He can’t feel his hands. He blinks a few times and shakes his head a little, because there’s no way, there’s no goddamn way. Not when they’re half a galaxy away from Hyperion, not when he’s managed to make it twelve years without seeing her.  
But not believing it doesn’t change the fact that she’s there, leaning against the storage room door, scanning the crowd with the same indifferent expression she’s always worn. Diamond. Juno wordlessly spins on his heel and walks out of the room. It takes everything in him not to sprint out of the building.  
She’s older, sure. Her hair has gone from silver to white, and in the brief look he got at her he could tell that she’d aged under the makeup. Whether it’s because of uniform regulations or pragmatism, She’s given up the five-inch platforms she used to wear every day. He thinks she might have been wearing glasses. Whatever’s changed, though, it’s still unmistakably Diamond.  
Out of everything that could possibly go wrong, all the outcomes they’d weighed while planning the heist, all the people Juno had anxiously prepared to run into, this was the one thing he hadn’t even considered. Sure, he didn’t know where she’d gone after they left the HCPD, but after their dead-on-arrival wedding he hadn’t seen her at all. When he still lived on Mars he wouldn’t leave his house until he had a plan for what he’d do if he ran into her, but goddamn it, he thought he’d be safe after he left the planet. For once, he misses his old hypervigilance, regrets giving up all the paranoia in favor of Nureyev’s careful optimism. Because if he’d been as scared of seeing Diamond as he used to be, he would have an idea of how to handle this. He doesn’t, though. He has no goddamn idea.  
“Steel, what’s the problem?” Buddy asks. He can’t answer. There’s bile in his throat, and his vocal chords froze over with his lungs. If he could breathe, maybe he could tell her that they have to pull out, that they have to leave, now, but he can’t.  
“What’s the matter?” Nureyev is standing too close to him. In any other situation it would be a comfort, but now it just reminds him of all the things he hasn’t said yet. And all the things he’s still waiting for Nureyev to do. He takes a few steps away from him, further into the hallway; thankfully he gets the hint and keeps his distance. Get it together, Steel, he tells himself. You’re not going to fuck up the whole job because you don’t want to talk to your ex. If anything this is an advantage; he knows exactly how to keep Diamond distracted. He spent more than seven years living with her, and she can’t have changed that much. Get it together. Keep your shit together for twenty minutes, tops, and then you can say goodbye to her for good. He straightens up and adjusts his jacket, plasters a smile back onto his face. “I, uh, know the mark. But it’s fine, I can just tell her I changed my name, everything will be fine.”  
“Who is it? Are you sure?”  
“Yes. Yeah,” Juno says, too quickly. “She’s just an old friend. It’s okay. We can go back in.”  
“All right.” Nureyev offers his arm. Juno doesn’t take it. His hands are clenched tightly at his sides.  
On their way back into the gallery, towards that corner of the room where Diamond is propped against the door, Juno only trips once. He doesn’t think anyone notices except him. He almost turns and runs again when he sees Diamond’s icy green eyes land briefly on him, but he can’t fuck up the job. Diamond looks at him again, and this time, her gaze holds, recognition flaring up in a bitter smile across her flawless face.  
“Juno!” she calls, motioning for him and Peter to come over. Her voice sounds friendly, but Juno knows too well what’s hiding just beneath the surface, a little hoarseness at the end of her words, the barely-disguised anger that would come out the second she was out of eyesight or earshot of anyone else. “Juno, get over here, I haven’t seen you in ages.” She sounds too friendly, syrupy sweet. Her nails glint in the chandelier light, painted blue and filed to sharp points; sharp enough that Juno still has a couple scars from them. He digs his own nails into his palms until he feels them draw blood.  
“Hey, Diamond. It’s been a while.”  
“You look different. Good.”  
“So do you.”  
She gives him a slow once-over that makes him want to crawl out of his skin. “You fill out pretty nicely.”  
“Yeah, it, uh…” Juno clears his throat. “It comes with the sobriety.”  
Diamond laughs, warm and easy. Too warm, too easy. Juno keeps a close eye on her hands. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft, Steel.”  
“Roi, actually.”  
“Really?”  
Juno pointedly moves closer to Nureyev. There’s a moment of tense silence that can’t possibly end well. Diamond’s carefree front freezes in place, and her voice comes out strained. “Right. Sorry, I haven’t even introduced myself to your… I’m Diamond.”  
“Adrian,” Nureyev says, extending a hand. It’s clear he’s having a hard time getting a grasp on the situation, and on Juno’s relationship to the person whose hand he’s shaking. Suddenly Juno realizes he’s kept enough of his past hidden that he probably doesn’t even know what the sobriety comment was about. God, he hopes none of the other crew members are listening too closely.  
“Lovely to meet you,” Diamond says. She turns her attention back to Juno, eyes hard and tense in a way that makes him nauseous. “Where’d you pick this one up, hmm?”  
“Uh, Venus.”  
“Really?” She laughs again. “Never thought you’d be able to make it out of Hyperion. Good for you.”  
“Yeah, it is.” When they’d been together, he hadn’t been able to see what she was doing, all the backhanded compliments, the subtle ways she managed to take control. He gets it now, but that doesn’t mean he’s able to resist any of it. And he wouldn’t resist even if he knew how to, because this is how he’s going to get his job done.  
“What have you been doing? Besides leaving Mars and getting hitched, I mean.”  
“Um, travelling, mostly.” Diamond had always been able to tell when he was lying, so he’s trying to tell as much truth as possible.  
Nureyev still looks lost, and maybe a little angry, but he’s found his footing enough to take over. “I’m the curator for an art museum on Venus, so most of my job is, well, this.” He gestures behind him at the party. “And Juno’s good company, you know, so I bring him along whenever I can.”  
“Is he?” Diamond says flatly.  
He ignores the remark. “I actually— I’m sure this against protocol— our hostess was supposed to show me a few pieces she’s been keeping in storage, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to track her down before the auction starts. Would you mind terribly if I looked around? Under your supervision, of course.”  
Diamond glances between the two of them for a couple seconds, until her gaze rests on Juno and her smile widens ever so slightly. “I suppose I can make an exception. You can look around while Steel and I catch up.”  
“Roi,” Nureyev corrects.  
“Sure.” She pulls a key card out of her pocket and opens the door. “After you.”  
Juno knew she’d let them in— she’d never pass up the chance to get the last word in, to let him know exactly how he fucked up and what she could do about it, if she wanted to. He takes a deep breath (which is a lot harder than it should be) and follows Peter through the door. The doorway is too small, and Diamond knows it; she turns at the last second so that she brushes against Juno, hard, and he holds back the full-body flinch as best he can. His best must not be very good, though, because Peter notices and gives him a look, clearly waiting for a signal that he should call it off and get Juno out of here as quickly as possible. He doesn’t give him any signal. He can do this. It shouldn’t even be that hard— Diamond hadn’t even been that bad, he reminds himself, he’s just spent the past twelve years blowing everything out of proportion and running from every reminder of her. Face your fucking fear, Steel, it’s not that hard.  
“Everything’s organized alphabetically by artist. Let me know when you’re done.” Diamond says it for Nureyev, but she doesn’t take her eyes off of Juno. He hesitates for a moment, then disappears into the rows of shelves, leaving the other two relatively alone.  
Diamond is standing to close. She’s four inches taller than him without heels— the same height as Nureyev, but something about the way she carries herself makes it more of an assertion of dominance than a biological fact.  
“You look different,” she says. “Really different. I guess it’s just the extra weight. And you’ve got a couple more scars, I guess. Where’d they come from? That fucking Adrian guy back there?”  
Juno grits his teeth. “No, they’re not from them. And the weight’s not a bad thing, you know.”  
“I didn’t say it was.”  
“You were sure as hell thinking it.”  
“Come on, baby—”  
“Don’t fucking call me that.”  
The last traces of Diamond’s fake smile fall away, replaced with the hard-eyed annoyance Juno recognizes. “There’s no reason to be such a bitch, we’re just having a conversation. Besides, you don’t even have anything to be mad about. You left me, remember? You’re in the wrong here. I’m the one who should be angry.”  
Is Nureyev listening? He really hopes he’s not. “So far I’d call this more of an attack than a conversation.”  
“Why’d you leave? It was the week before our fucking wedding. I came home and you were gone. Where did you go?” She almost sounds hurt. She probably feels hurt. When they were still together, Juno would’ve believed her, would’ve done anything to make her feel better. Now, he couldn’t care less, but he also doesn’t want her to come any closer, so he picks his words carefully.  
“You wanna know where I went? I went to rehab, Di. I stayed at Mick’s until you’d stopped looking for me, and then I went to rehab, because you wouldn’t let me.”  
“I told you I’d take you after the wedding.”  
“No, you didn’t. You—”  
“I’m pretty sure I did. You probably forgot, though. You always forgot about everything I did for you. God, you were so ungrateful.”  
“Sorry, you’re gonna have to remind me what a great girlfriend you were again. My memory’s still a little fuzzy after that concussion you gave me.”  
Diamond’s hands twitch at her sides. Juno’s vision goes black around the edges.  
“I paid your rent for seven years. I took you to the ER every time you tried to off yourself. Come on, baby, I took care of you. And I was the only one doing it, until you left.”  
“You were the only one because you wouldn’t let me talk to Mick.”  
“That’s not even true!”  
“What the hell are you—” Juno catches himself. This is how it always started. He was always the one who raised his voice first. He’d push Diamond until she snapped, every time. He can’t let that happen now, not when he’s in the middle of a robbery, not when Nureyev’s in the room. “Fine,” he says. “Sure. Fine.”  
“Thank you.”  
“What do you want, Di?”  
She softens all of a sudden, her eyes getting wider. He forgot how fast she changes tactics. He used to come out of every fight they had with whiplash. Well, whiplash and a black eye or two.”I just want to take care of you. That’s all I ever wanted to do.”  
She takes a step forward. Juno takes a step back and finds himself pressed against a shelving unit, cornered, nowhere else to go. “I’m married. Not to you,” he stammers, glancing around for a way out.  
“Leave him, then. I got a nice place downtown.”  
“You think I’m gonna live with you again? After everything you—”  
Before Juno can react, Diamond’s fingers are wrapped around his forearms, pulling him towards her. All of a sudden he feels very, very small He can’t breathe. He can’t feel his hands. He can barely see. She laughs and her hands up and down Juno’s sleeves. “I like this suit on you. Did Adrian pick it out? I mean, they must have. We both know you can’t dress yourself.”  
“Let go please.” His voice is too quiet, and he knows she’s not going to listen, but he has to say it anyway. He has to try, doesn’t he?  
“I don’t want to,” Diamond hisses, her grip tightening.  
“Can you please just let go of me.”  
“I don’t want to. I miss you, I haven’t seen you in like a decade. I miss you.”  
“Diamond, let go, I’m—”  
“Well, I think I’ve seen everything I need to see.” Nureyev’s voice is much louder than it has to be, and he’s speaking in a tone Juno has never heard before. “Juno, darling, shall we go?” He holds out a hand, and Diamond drops her hands. Juno all but runs away from her, putting as much space between them as he reasonably can. Up close, Nureyev looks… angry. Incredibly angry. He’s shaking with it. Juno gets it— he’s mad at how many secrets Juno’s been keeping, and at how one of those secrets almost jeopardize the mission. The second they’re back on the Carte Blanche he’s gonna start yelling. At least Juno’s not going to be around to hear it; he can already feel himself disconnecting, curling up inside himself, deaf and blind to the rest of the world. He barely registers Nureyev leading him out of the mansion, and he only catches glimpses of the conversation going on in his earpiece:  
“... signal blocker, we lost you in there. Did everything go okay?”  
“... keep your voice down, Ransom, you’re still…”  
“... is he okay now? I mean, besides the…”  
“... waiting outside…”  
He can still feel Diamond’s hands along his arms. Through the fog that’s settled over everything, and the sound of his own ragged breathing, he realizes he’s cold. Like, really cold. Where is he again? Some goddamn party, obviously, but suddenly he can’t remember any of the specifics. Distantly, he hears a door open, and feels someone help him into a chair. A passenger seat. The Ruby7. That feels like enough information for now. He settles into a shaky kind of nothingness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we are going to ignore the fact that I just... didn't give Juno a fake first name. we are looking away.  
> leave a comment if you'd like!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen if penumbra won't give me the long-ass flashback i deserve, i'll write it myself. also 3 chapters in 1 night... a gift for u all  
> this chapter is uhhh very intense and the trigger list is very long, but the good news is that it's completely skippable and you won't miss any major plot points if you don't read it. take care of yourself lol  
> triggers for this chapter:  
> \- explicit descriptions of domestic violence  
> \- emotional abuse/gaslighting  
> \- body shaming (scars)  
> \- suicidal ideation/discussion of suicide  
> \- substance abuse & overdose  
> \- r@pe aftermath

Juno Steel is twenty-three years old and he just realized he looks like a completely different person from who he was when Diamond met him. He’s lost a lot of weight (he thinks it can’t be healthy, but she’s proud of him for it anyway), he’s got a lot more scars than he used to (he assumes she’s proud of herself for that), and there’s just something fundamentally different about him that he assumes came with whatever snapped inside of him when Benten died last year. He straightens his tie in the mirror; he was going to wear a dress, but then Diamond pointed out that she could see all the bruises on his knees, so he changed.  
(Her fist connects with his face, rings on every finger digging into the skin above his jaw, and he falls hard onto the kitchen tile. In his head, he scrambles away immediately, but his reaction time’s still slowed from the pills he swallowed dry on the bus ride home, and her foot is slamming into his chest before he can even bring his arms up to protect himself.)  
Diamond stands in the bathroom doorway, blocking Juno’s exit, staring at him like he’s the most beautiful thing in the world. He isn’t, he knows that, but that’s the kind of thing you do when you love someone. And Diamond loves him. And he loves Diamond.  
“We don’t have to stay for the whole party, if you don’t want to. We can always come home early and, I don’t know…” she walks behind Juno and rest her chin on the top of his head, wrapping her arms around his waist “...find something else to do.” Between her natural height and her heels, she’s a full foot taller than Juno. Other people tell them the height difference is cute, and he has to believe them. He tries his best to relax into her touch.  
“Do you want to leave early?” he asks.  
“With you looking like that? Absolutely.” She smiles at him in the mirror.  
(She pins his hands against the wall with one hand and work the buttons of his uniform shirt with the other, leaving new bruises on his wrists and exposing the old ones across his ribs. She grins, pressing herself closer. Juno closes his eyes and waits for the painkillers to kick in.)  
“We can leave whenever you want,” Juno says. He doesn’t even want to go to the party in the first place, and he’s too tired for whatever Diamond has planned for when she gets home, but he’s been staying late at work almost every night lately, and he has to make it up to her. It’s the least he can do, after making her deal with all of his shit. He owes her a lot: she’d scraped him off the floor after Benten died, and gotten him promoted to detective, and hell, he was living in her apartment. He barely does anything for her— she keeps reminding him of that. So he smiles back at her.   
“Try not to drink to much tonight, baby. These are my friends, and it’d be nice if you liked each other, and no offense, but you’re kind of mean when you’re drunk.”  
Juno doesn’t say: “so are you.” Juno doesn’t say: “last week you told me you hate me when I’m sober.” Instead, Juno says: “I’ll try my best.”  
Diamond looks satisfied with his answer, but it’s a strange kind of satisfaction, like he’s some kind of project she’s been working on and has finally completed. She drops her hands. Juno lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “I’ll meet you in the car.” Her heels click against the bathroom tile, hollow and loud. She stops in the doorway again and give Juno one last once-over: “Are you sure you can’t cover up those stitches?”  
(“Can you just shut the fuck up for once in your life?” She turns from the sink and towards him, the plate she was washing still in her hand. Juno knows that it’s coming before it happens, but something stops him from defending himself. He hears something break, feels a shattering pain right above his eye. Red drips in front of his vision. Diamond’s already apologizing, gripping his face in her hands so she can inspect the damage.)  
Juno glances back at the mirror, at the small but angry row of stitches snaking from his hairline to just above his eyebrow. “The doctor said no makeup until it’s healed,” he mutters. It’s not a good enough answer for Diamond, but his answers never are. She shrugs and walk down the hallway. 

Juno Steel is twenty-four years old and his hospital record is almost as long as the list of people who want him dead. The emergency room staff at Hyperion General all know him by name. It’s almost a weekly occurrence. Falco helps him through the door while he keeps pressure on the latest stab wound or holds a broken wrist to his chest— he fights dirty, and everyone says it’s the Oldtown in him, but he knows it’s the Sarah Steel. Cassandra Kanagawa carries him in after finding him passed out in the bathroom, and while he fights to stay awake she tells him that if he wakes up in time he can come back to the party, if his piece-of-shit girlfriend doesn’t mind. He rolls his eyes at that, and then turns away so he can throw up on the emergency room floor. Rita breaks every traffic law she can driving him from the HCPD headquarters after he makes an offhand comment about the dizziness and the ringing in his ears and how it might be a concussion, and she doesn’t ask, so he doesn’t have to tell her how Diamond slammed him into the wall so hard he’d blacked out the night before.  
Diamond always picks him up. She drives him home— in silence, more often than not, the kind of silence that Juno feels like he should apologize for. He has a lot to apologize for, but he never knows what to start with.   
Tonight, it was another overdose. She’d found him on the kitchen floor gasping for air; the last thing he remembers before waking up in the hospital is her dragging him down the stairs, saying, “jesus fucking christ. Again, Juno?”  
She’s sick of him. She should be. Her fingers tap against the steering wheel, rings making a muffled tapping sound against it. Juno presses himself into the corner of the passenger seat, leans his head against the cool glass of the window, fidgets with the plastic bracelet on his wrist. He’s always got a couple of them. He can’t be bothered to cut them off unless Diamond asks him to.   
“I’m sorry,” he says.   
Diamond rolls her eyes. “Next time you want to kill yourself, use a blaster or something. Don’t half-ass it.”  
“I—”  
“No, you don’t have to respond.”  
Juno clenches his jaw and stares out at the passing streets. His fingers find a newer bruise on his forearm, and he presses down hard.

Rita sticks around to ride the elevator back down to the lobby with Juno, which isn’t unusual— she does it even when they’re the last two people in the building. He doesn’t get it, but he also can’t get her to stop, and at this point he almost enjoys it. A few times he’s thought about asking if she wants to get a drink or something. Diamond already thinks he’s cheating on her, though, and if she found out the reason he was home late was because he was out with his secretary he thinks she might kill him. Or worse, leave him.   
He puts on his jacket, wincing at the way the movement treats his cracked ribs, and flicks his office lights off. Rita follows him through the rows of empty desks; she trails him a little closer than usual, like she’s working up the courage to tell him something. He’s tempted to turn around and snap at her, tell her to come out with it, but he’s yelled at her even more than usual this week. And Diamond’s right: he’s got a mean streak. He’s just like his mother. So he swallows it and makes an offhand comment about the case he’s working on instead.  
Rita, uncharacteristically, doesn’t respond. She just pushes the button to call the elevator, like she didn’t hear him. Juno shrugs it off. If she doesn’t want to talk, that’s fine by him.   
She looks nervous, though. And once they’re in the elevator, her eyes dart wildly between Juno and the doors. He lets out a sight and braces himself for whatever conversation he’s about to start.  
“Is something wrong, Rita?”  
“What? Oh, no, it’s nothing, it’s just… look, boss, I know your personal life ain’t none of my business—”  
“Good.”  
“— but lately you’ve been coming in with a lot of black eyes and stuff, and I know it’s not from work.”  
Juno’s blood goes cold. He knew someone was going to bring it up eventually, working in a room full of detectives who have all seen their fair share of domestic violence cases (even though that’s not what this is, it’s different, he deserves it), but he hadn’t figured out how to respond yet. “What the hell are you saying?” he says, careful not to raise his voice, careful to cover any kind of noticeable reaction. Juno’s a careful person, despite what it looks like.   
“I ain’t saying anything about that. All I wanted to say was, if you ever need a place to stay or anything, you just let me know. I got a real comfy couch.”  
“I’m fine.”   
“Okay.” She says it in an almost conspiratory way, like she knows. Like she knows how scared he is of going home, or how there’s a hell of a lot more beyond the black eyes, under his clothes and all the concealer, or how he’s got a change of clothes and five hundred creds cash hidden in a bag in the back of the hall closet, even though he knows he’s never gonna use it.  
“I’m fine,” he says again, and when the elevator hits the ground floor he can’t get out of it fast enough.

Juno Steel is twenty-five and lately, every conversation he has with Mick Mercury turns into a fight. He’s pacing the fire escape, his comms in one hand and a cigarette in the other, trying and failing to keep his voice down. Diamond’s inside talking to the caterer, and he doesn’t want to disturb her. For a variety of reasons.   
“It’s my goddamn wedding, Mick,” he half-shouts. “I don’t know why the hell you think you’ve got a say in it.”  
“You told me she proposed so it’d be harder for you to leave! You didn’t even want to say yes! And she’s getting worse, J. I don’t know if you see it, but it’s true. I’m just… worried about you.”  
“Don’t be.” Juno glares at his shoes, and then at the finger-shaped bruises that wrap around his wrist. “I’m fine. She’s fine. I want this.” He’s fine. He wants this. And even if he doesn’t… it doesn’t matter. The only other option is leaving, and he knows he can’t do that. He’d never make it on his own— he’s too stupid, and he breaks down too easily, and he never stops talking. Diamond tells him that all the time, and she’s right.   
“I just think it’s a bad idea.”  
“You thought dropping out to start a career in street racing with your piece of shit bike was a good idea, so that doesn’t mean a lot coming from you.” It’s a low blow and he knows it, but he just needs Mick to stop talking. The longer he talks, the more he makes sense, and Juno’s grip on himself is already pretty weak.   
He hears Mick sigh through the comms. “Fine, Juno. Whatever. I’m happy for you.”  
“You just said you’re not.”  
“No, I am. I’m happy you found someone to treat you like shit, because clearly you think you need it.”  
Juno doesn’t respond to that. He stares through the window at Diamond, at her hands pressed flat against the kitchen counter, at her rings and long nails. A few seconds later, the comms goes dead.

Juno’s twenty-five and he’s trying, goddamn it, he’s trying. He wakes up every morning drenched in sweat, and that’s if he slept at all, he can’t keep any food down for more than a few hours, and his hands shake so hard that he’s given up on his blaster entirely. But a week ago he was sitting in the bathroom with a handful of pills in one hand and a glass filled to the brim with whiskey in the other and he realized he was one bad day away from becoming Sarah Steel, and something had to change.   
So far the only thing he’s really succeeded in doing is reminding himself of all the reasons he started using in the first place. He’s been pacing the length of his office all day, the reports that were due two days ago sitting untouched on his desk. He’s trying. He’s trying, but it’s Friday and there’s nothing stopping him from heading straight to the Kanagawa house after work, or stopping at a familiar corner in Oldtown on his way home and restocking everything he flushed a week ago.   
Falco was the one who brought up rehab, last night, when Juno missed a shot he should’ve been able to make with his eyes closed and spent the next five minutes cursing as loud as he could. He’d said it with the same level of caution the two of them always use around non-work-related topics: they have an agreement that Juno doesn’t ask about Puck’s kids and Puck doesn’t ask about the wedding planning. But he’d said it, something about a place that his buddy went to a couple years back, and now Juno can’t help thinking about it. As much as he hates to admit it, it’s becoming pretty obvious that he’s not going to be able to do this on his own.  
Plus, a month of living away from Diamond’s apartment sounds like heaven.   
He thinks about it so much that he feels like he can tell Diamond on the way home from work. As usual, it’s a mistake, and he knows it as soon as he says it. She doesn’t say anything, but her gaze on the road hardens in a way that makes Juno curl in on himself, protecting his ribs and stomach. After a few tense moments, her gaze turns to him.  
“The wedding’s two months away and you want to leave me alone for half of that to go work through your mommy issues on the other side of town?”  
Juno doesn’t say: “yes,” and he doesn’t say: “leaving you alone would be the best part of it.” Instead, he says: “If it’s too much I could do outpatient instead, or something.”  
“It’s not like it’s going to work, anyway.”  
“It might.”  
She laughs, short and bitter. “Baby, no offense, but have you seen yourself? It’s nice that you’re trying and everything, but you couldn’t go sober if your life depended on it.”  
Juno brings his knees up to his chest. He stares out the window at the buildings rushing past and the artificial rain pouring down. He doesn’t know if she’s right. It doesn’t feel right. Nothing does, lately.   
The car stops at a red light, and suddenly Diamond’s hand is on his shoulder, uncharacteristically gentle. He looks up and her expression’s gone soft again. “Come on, baby. Stay with me.”  
He nods and leans into her touch. At this point, he can’t tell if he means it or not.  
Later that night he finds a bottle of painkillers that Diamond had hid in the back of the pantry and he swallows half of them. He tells himself he’s better off, anyway, but he doesn’t believe it.

Juno Steel is twenty-six and he hasn’t moved in three hours. He’s exactly where Diamond left him: sprawled out on the couch with his shirt pushed up past his stomach and his skirt on the other side of the room, blood drying under his nose and bruises darkening on his throat. He’s had a lot of time to think, frozen like that, watching the patches of light on the ceiling move with the setting sun. Mostly, he’s been thinking about how he’s going to cover everything up for the wedding, because there’s no way it’ll all have healed in a week. And that’s just if Diamond could go a week without hitting him, which he doubts could ever happen.   
Is this what it’s going to be like for the rest of his life? Sitting at home, trying to work up the energy and nerve to patch himself up, and waiting for Diamond to come back and hurt him again? The thought makes him nauseous. It’s not that he thinks he deserves better. He knows he doesn’t. It’s not even that he’s scared of what she might do— he accepted the fact that she might kill him the first time an argument got out of hand, and aside from that she’s already done what has to be her worst. (Juno glances down at the marks where Diamond’s fingers had dug into his hips. She’s already done what has to be her worst.) It’s just that, when he was still living with Sarah, he’d had a way out. No matter what, he was going to grow up and move out. Usually that was the only thing keeping him going. Even when Diamond gave up on trying to be nice to him, for the first few years a part of him kept believing that he’d find a way out someday. Now, though… the wedding’s in a week. And after that, what’s he going to do, divorce her? He’s scared to go to the goddamn grocery store without asking her permission. So he’s got his whole life ahead of him, and every second of it includes Diamond. And suddenly he’s fucking exhausted.  
He moves to the shower and stands there for a few minutes, the water almost boiling. It doesn’t make him feel any better, but it snaps him out of his trance and it washes as much of Diamond off his skin as it possibly can. That has to count for something.  
The whole process is easier than he thought it would be. Hardly any of the stuff in the apartment is his, so all he has to do is shove his clothes and a couple photos in his duffel bag. He wastes a lot of time deciding whether or not to take the wedding dress, but eventually the idea of Diamond keeping any kind of reminder of him scares him more than keeping it, so he folds it up the best he can. He doesn’t leave a note. He doesn’t even leave the ring. It gets dropped out the window of the bus to Oldtown; he thinks he hears it bounce against the sidewalk, maybe clatter down a storm drain, but it’s probably just his imagination.   
It takes a while for Mick to answer his knock, and in those long seconds Juno almost bolts. If he ran, he could be home and unpacked again before Diamond’s shift ends. He might even have time to start making dinner, which would put her in a good mood when she noticed the missing ring. The idea takes hold, and he’s turning to leave when Mick finally opens the door. He looks pleasantly surprised.  
“JJ, what are you doing here?” Then, in a flatter voice: “Is Di with you?”  
Juno opens his mouth, but he doesn’t know what to say. Instead, he runs headfirst into Mick, wrapping his arms around him and burying his face in his shoulder. Mick returns the embrace, but slowly, giving Juno plenty of time and space to pull away. Like he expects Juno to pull away. He probably does— Juno’s never been one for physical affection. That had always been Benten’s department.  
The thought comes before he can stop it, the memory of Benten’s arm around the shoulders of whoever was nearest, and suddenly Juno’s crying harder than he ever has in his life, and he can’t figure out how to stop.   
Mick rests a hand on the back of Juno’s head. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says. “‘S gonna be alright.”  
They stand in the doorway like that for a long time. Hours, maybe. At one point, through the tears, Juno hears his comms ring, and he knows it’s Diamond, but he lets it ring until she gives up. By the time they pull apart and move into Mick’s apartment, it’s gone completely dark outside. The rain is starting up.  
“Can I, uh, stay here for a couple days?” he asks hoarsely.  
“Of course. Stay as long as you gotta.”  
Juno nods.  
"Hey." Mick stares at Juno until he works up the courage to meet his eyes. "You did the right thing. I'm proud of you, buddy."  
Juno lets himself believe him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was put on this earth for one purpose and it's to cause juno steel a lot of pain  
> drop a comment if you want to!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm pulling a sophie and kevin where i give you a Big Juno Moment and then cut to literally anything besides Juno's pov. anyway it's NUREYEV TIME
> 
> i don't think there's any trigger warnings for this chapter, lmk if i'm wrong though

Peter might not trust Buddy Aurinko, but he trusts her ability to keep her composure. He trusts it because it’s a quality he shares with her; neither of them have ever left their bedrooms without a thick coat of makeup on, and they’ve both had the ability to turn a compromising situation into an advantageous one driven deep into them by the nature of their careers. He’s observant enough to catch her in the act of gluing herself together sometimes: grinding her teeth as she smiles, or pausing a little longer than usual between her carefully-though-out words. And he’s self-aware enough to know that she’s seen the same things in him, too. So, as much as he allows himself to rely on anything, he’s come to rely on Buddy’s ability to create an eye in any hurricane, even if it’s just for herself.   
So when she storms into the meeting room like she’s on a warpath, silently fills a glass to the brim with scotch and drinks it down without stopping to breathe, and sits down at the head of the table with a clipped “what the hell happened?”, Peter has to admit, he feels more than a little nervous.  
He tries to make up for it. Peter Nureyev— well, Peter Ransom— is a master overcompensator. He starts to slip into character, his affected accent and forced eloquence and ramrod posture, but the words die in his throat.   
Juno.  
He’s seen Juno scared before; of course he has, their first date had devolved rather quickly into being tortured in a Martian tomb together. But tonight had been different. It had been some kind of mix of fear and expectation, he’d looked completely paralyzed, and that look hadn’t gone away once it was just the two of them. More than that, Peter’s seen glimpses of it before, when their arguments got a little loud or when he went a little faster than usual taking Juno’s clothes off. It’s never lasted for more than a passing second, but Peter can’t deny that he’s noticed it. And as self-absorbed as it is, the idea that Juno sees even a fraction of Diamond in him has been steadily eating away at him since they left the party.  
He takes a deep, practiced breath. If he can’t do something with composure, he can at least do it with speed. “The mark was someone that Juno knew. From what I could hear, his ex. He said it was okay to keep going according to plan, though. We did, and I managed to get two of the paintings before— before it became too dangerous to let their conversation continue. So we left early. I’m sorry I didn’t finish the job, I—”  
“It’s okay, Ransom. Two out of three is a passing grade. We’ll sell what we have and make do, or steal something else to make up for it. At the moment I’m more worried about the state of our detective.”  
“Right.”  
“Right,” Buddy echoes. Then the two of them sit there for a moment, each wrapped up in their separate thoughts about the door on the other end of the ship that’s been closed since Juno slammed it shut a few hours ago. Nureyev thinks about knocking. No, he doesn’t. If he were Juno, he’d want space. He’d be a fool not to have noticed the way Juno refused to let him touch him on the drive back to the Carte Blanche, shying away from his hands like it was second nature. An instinct he picked up somewhere. He has a pretty good idea of where that somewhere was, now. The anger that’s been burning in the space between his chest and his stomach rears its head, and he pushes it down as fast and hard as he can. Files it away. For future consideration.  
Buddy takes a sharp breath in and lays her hands flat on the table. “Well, we give him a few days to recover, and in the meantime we make sure Rita is able to run through the guest and employment rosters for our next jobs so this doesn’t happen again. To any of us. Was he injured at all? Because Vespa can—”  
“No, I don’t think he was.”  
“Good.” She nods, her expression guarded, her jaw tight. “Jet and I will meet our buyer on Elara tomorrow morning. I think that takes care of everything.”  
“I thought I was joining you tomorrow.”  
“You can come if you want, I just thought it might be best for you to be… around. If Juno needs you.”  
Nureyev presses his tongue against his teeth and pretends that’s an easy thing to believe. That Juno needs him. He knows it’s true, logically, but it’s been five months and he still can’t quite wrap his mind around the concept. Juno Steel is a lot of things, and upon first glance self-reliant seems to be the first of them. Once you get close enough, you see that he’s actually self-contained, folded in on himself at the expense of, well, nearly everything. But he’s gotten so good at it that sometimes Nureyev wonders if it’s actually a problem; or, he wonders if it’s a problem Juno actually has any intention of fixing. He’s okay with sleeping in different rooms, of course he is. He can give Juno as much space as he needs. That doesn’t erase the feeling that Juno’s going to take all the space he can give and then some, though; it doesn’t change the fact that sometimes Nureyev looks at him and hears the sound of a hotel room door closing. Regardless of the indisputable truth that Juno needs him just as much as he needs Juno, he knows how easy it would be for the detective to convince himself otherwise. And that scares him.  
“That will be all, Ransom.”  
“Of course. Good night, Captain.”   
Nureyev pauses just outside the meeting room door, running a hand through his hair, smoothing out his skirt in a practiced motion. If he were a different kind of man, he’d find somewhere quiet to smoke half a pack of cigarettes and then he’d go back to his room and stare at the wall for the rest of the night. He’d try and get some sleep. He’d do his best to stop thinking. But he doesn’t really care for sleeping— it’s just several hours staying in one place, it leaves him too vulnerable, there’s no surefire way out of it— and he quit smoking years ago. So instead, he paces the entire length of the Carte Blanche for a while. He does his best to play it off; every room he passes, he has an excuse ready in case someone notices him and asks if anything’s wrong.   
He passes Juno’s room. He thinks about tracking her down; they don’t leave until the morning, and she’d all but said where she lives, so it wouldn’t be hard. The whole job would be done in two hours tops, and obviously no one would be able to trace it back to him. He’s a face without a name, or vice versa, he’s a walking disappearing act. No one would be able to trace it back to anyone. Not even the other Aurinkos. He won’t do it, especially not with Juno in the state he’s in— he wouldn’t be able to handle another death, even if it would ultimately be a weight off both their shoulders. But he entertains the idea for a while. It doesn’t make the anger go away, but it satiates it a little.  
He passes Juno’s room. Goddamnit. Why hadn’t he stepped in sooner? He should have been listening better; the job shouldn’t have been more important than Juno. Or maybe it should have been, in which case, he shouldn’t have left early, and left Juno to deal with the situation himself. He doesn’t know which option he hates more. Either way, neither of them come out the winner. He’s spent so much time working alone, putting everything he had into the current job, making it as clear as possible to anyone who invited him to dinner or back to their place that he’d be gone before morning… now that he has someone else to think about he doesn’t know what’s right. He loves Juno. More than he’s ever loved anything, maybe. How is he supposed to do his job when he’s got all this love to think about? How can he leave himself hidden at the bottom of his suitcase when Juno loves Peter Nureyev, trick knee and nearsightedness and lightning-bolt scars tracking up his arms and chest? This is how he knows he’ll never be as good a thief as Buddy Aurinko; she plans for two like its second nature. Maybe it is, for her. Maybe she’s just naturally better than him. Maybe she didn’t have to work for any of this.  
He passes Juno’s room. This time, he hears voices inside— the tinned, melodramatic dialogue of a stream, but also Rita, quieter than he’s ever heard her, and Juno. He pauses to listen.  
“... set the little tracker thing on my comms back to zero, Mister Steel. I ain’t gonna do it.”  
“Fine. Don’t, then. This doesn’t have to count.”  
“That ain’t how this works. And I wouldn’t do that, either, because we both know I can take you in a fight.”  
“That’s… not even true, what the hell?”  
“I could right now.”  
“You wanna test that theory?”  
“Oh! This is the best part of the whole show. Come here, you gotta see it. And sit down, you’re makin’ me nervous.”  
“You’re not just gonna distract me with—”  
“Yes, I am.”  
Nureyev keeps walking. He respects the detective’s privacy. It’s hard. He’s made a life for himself learning everything about people without ever meeting them. Whatever he has with Juno is the opposite of that; knowing someone without knowing about them. Juno doesn’t sleep in the same room as him, and he doesn’t tell him where he got the thin scar that runs from his hairline and cuts through his right eyebrow. He doesn’t talk about Mars more than he absolutely has to. Everything Peter knows, he pieced together through a combination of the file he read before they met (lists of the cases he worked in and outside of the HCPD, a hospital record the size of a small novel, a couple tabloid articles about his entrance and exit from the Kanagawa twins’ inner circle, nothing he couldn’t have figured out himself), and looking at Juno, watching him; the way he tenses up whenever Jet stands too close to him, or the half-smile on his face whenever Buddy played one of the ballet scores she likes through the Carte Blanche’s intercom. Beyond that, he’s not sure what he’s allowed to know, or even what he’s allowed to figure out, so he doesn’t pry. He knows he wasn’t supposed to see what happened tonight— that Juno wasn’t ready for Peter to know about his past engagement, and that he might never have been. He wishes for everyone’s sakes that Juno had been allowed more privacy than he got tonight.  
He passes Juno’s room. He doesn’t get very far, though, because right as he’s walking by for what has to be the twentieth time tonight, Juno opens the door, almost hitting him with it. They both stare at each other for a moment, deer in the headlights, unsure of how to proceed.  
Juno looks… well, it’s impossible for him to look bad. But he looks tired in a nervous kind of way. His eye darts between his room and the hallway, rimmed with smudged makeup that Peter dimly remembers applying that morning. The hood of his sweatshirt leaves most of his face in shadow, and his hands are buried deep in the pockets. All of his usual defensiveness is gone, but what’s left isn’t so much calm as dull indifference. He looks like someone emptied him out, scraped him clean. Well, someone did. Nureyev pushes down his anger.   
“Are you feeling any better, love?” he asks.  
“Does it look like I feel better?” Juno snaps, immediately followed by a quiet “sorry. Sorry, I just—”  
“It’s quite alright.” Nureyev flexes his fingers at his sides. He’s not very good at this. He’s never had to be any good at it, and he always assumed it would stay that way, and now he’s thirty-six and he can pick the lock on a pair of handcuffs in three seconds flat but he’s never had a real conversation in his life. “Can I… do anything for you?”  
Juno looks at him, then up the hall towards the infirmary, then at the floor, then back at him. He lets out a long, slow exhale. “Goddamnit. Yeah. Okay. Come in.” He turns on his heel and walks back into his room.  
“I don’t have to, if you’d rather—”  
“No, it’s not that. Come in.”  
Nureyev does. Juno’s suit from the auction is piled in the corner. There’s a stream projected on the wall, playing without sound, some kind of competition show. A fifth of whiskey that Peter is pretty sure he saw unopened in the kitchen this morning sits empty on the bedside table. Juno climbs back into bed and sits staring glassy-eyed at the stream.  
“I…” he doesn’t know how to breach the subject. He doesn’t even know which subject to breach, or if he should say anything at all. “... heard Rita in her earlier.”  
“I told her to leave. Convinced her I wasn’t going to do anything stupid.”  
Nureyev closes the door. The question sits heavy on his tongue: “Are you? Going to do anything?” It hangs heavy in the air once he says it.  
“I was. Now I’m not. I’m not going to talk about it.”  
“We should at some point—”  
“Nureyev.”  
“Right. Sorry.” He stands there for a moment, surveying the space. After a couple seconds, he realizes he’s started planning an escape route— not because he has any want or need for one, it’s just a force of habit, one he’s quickly beginning to hate— and he pulls his focus to something else. To Juno. “Do you want me to come sit with you?”  
“Um. Sure. Do whatever you want.”  
Nureyev pulls the desk chair around so it’s facing the stream, but still a good distance from where Juno sits on the bed, and curls up in it. ‘Whatever you want,’ coming from Juno, always means no. So he keeps his distance. They stay like that until the lights in the hallway kick back on with a groan. Once, Nureyev looks over and he’s crying, but neither of them bring it up.   
At some point in the midmorning, when they can hear the sounds of Jet boiling water for tea while Rita talks through mouthfuls of cereal, Juno clears his throat and says: “You can come over here. If you want.”  
Peter yawns, assesses the situation through blurry eyes. He can tell Juno means it. He stands up and crosses the room, sitting next to him but being careful not to touch him.  
He didn’t have to be, though; the second he’s settled in Juno’s wrapping his arms around Peter’s stomach, leaning his head against his chest.  
“Juno, I—”  
“I don’t know what to do, okay? I don’t know how to talk about it,” he says, his voice muffled through the fabric of Nureyev’s shirt. “But I’m going to. Soon. but not right now.”  
Peter Nureyev is a walking disappearing act, and staying anywhere is hard. Wanting to stay somewhere is even harder, in his experience. But right now, it’s easier than it’s ever been. He leans down and kisses Juno’s forehead. “Take your time, love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "take your time" lmao literally the next chapter is Juno Shares With The Class  
> leave a comment if you enjoyed!
> 
> i am also sleepdeprivedsurgeon on tiktok and tumblr if ur interested in less depressing content!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for taking so long to update! i had writer's block and a torrid affair with a different hyperfixation but i'm back, baby and it's time for Juno Shares With The Class
> 
> trigger warnings for this chapter:  
> \- references to past domestic abuse  
> \- references to past addiction

A few days pass. Juno… survives them. He makes compromises with himself. If he’s not going to shower or change his clothes (because that would mean seeing all the flaws Diamond used to point out, and all the scars she left, and it’s not that he believes her anymore, it’s just that he can’t take any more reminder right now), the least he can do is eat something. If he’s not allowed to wash half a bottle of sleeping pills down with half a bottle of scotch, at least he can spend fourteen hours straight watching old streams, lying completely motionless on the floor in front of his bed until his vision blurs and he can practically feel his muscles start to atrophy.  
He’s not scared. Well, he’s not any more scared than he usually is. What he is, is tired. He’d been running on fumes for weeks, and then Diamond came through and burnt him out completely, and even though it’s happened before he never got around to figuring out how to fix it. His go-to strategies have always been to either lock himself in his room for a couple weeks or stay high for long enough that when he finally came down the feeling had passed. Usually it was a combination of the two. But neither of those will work now. They hadn’t really worked before; they’d just been ways of passing the time, waiting it out.   
He doesn’t know what to do. And he’s sick of not knowing what to do. He’s sick of the other crew members checking in on him, asking him if he needs anything. He’s sick of needing something every time they ask, and he’s sick of struggling to figure out what it is. So far, they’ve figured it out first every time: Rita installs a lock on the infirmary door. Nureyev has slept in his desk chair every night since the heist, glowing in the light of whatever stream Juno’s watching. Buddy keeps the targets up in their makeshift shooting range and leaves a blaster on the kitchen table every night. Jet and Vespa keep their distance. Everyone’s treating him like he’s hurt, or broken, or something. And shit, maybe he is. But that doesn’t mean they have to do something about it. He can handle himself.  
No, he can’t. But he should be able to, shouldn’t he?  
He’s sitting on the counter while Nureyev fusses over a pot of soup on the stove, his back to him. He can’t remember the last time he looked at a clock, but the ship is deserted except for them, and the lights are off. When he’d asked if they could have dinner, though, the thief hadn’t hesitated. If he’d rather be asleep, he’s being careful not to show it.   
“I’m afraid I’m not nearly as good a cook as you, dear,” Nureyev is saying over his shoulder. “It should be ready in a few minutes though.”  
“Thanks.”  
“Of course.”  
Juno watches him, watches the way he rolls his shoulders back every once in a while, constantly correcting his posture. How he flexes his fingers every once in a while, rings flashing in the dim kitchen light. Something about Nureyev makes him feel like if he closed his eyes right now, he could fall asleep and stay asleep until the morning, and wake up feeling better. Maybe not good, but better, at least. Part of him— a bigger part than he’ll ever admit— is still waiting for things to take a sharp left turn into the violent, and he’s been especially aware of that the last few days. But even with the waiting, the love seems to outweigh the anger. On Nureyev’s side and on Juno’s.  
“Nureyev?”  
“Mm.”  
“We can, uh, talk. If you want.”  
Nureyev turns around with a bowl in each hand, eyes widening. “Are you sure?”  
“No. But I guess I’ll stop if it’s too much.”  
“Right.”  
“Can we…” Juno looks down the hallway towards the bedrooms. He knows the chances of someone walking through the kitchen are low, but they’re not zero, and lately every space he’s in that isn’t his room feels too big, like he’s drowning in it, like all the air is rushing toward the distant corners.  
“I was just about to suggest that. After you, darling.”

They sit on the floor facing each other. It feels a little like the time he, Benten, and Sasha held a failed seance. It feels a lot like the first week he spent sleeping on Mick’s couch, when they’d spent every night eating shitty takeout and catching up on everything they’d missed, on all the time Juno had sunk into Diamond. Shit.   
“I’ve never actually, y’know, talked about it before. The only people I’d ever want to tell are Rita and Mick, and they were there for all of it.”  
“Haven’t you dated other people?”  
“Not seriously. Or, I mean, if it was serious, I still didn’t… trust them, I guess.” And every time, he’d been right not to. Ever since Diamond he’s made sure to leave himself an easy way out, and so far he’s had to use it every single time. He’d even used it on Nureyev, the first two times, but now he didn’t have one. He doesn’t think he’d leave even if he could, though. That’s probably a bad thing. Was this a bad idea? Juno clenches his fingers into fists.  
“But you trust me.”  
“I think so.”  
“All right, then.”  
“Okay, um, what do you want to know?”  
Nureyev looks around the room, his tongue pressing against the back of his teeth. Juno doesn’t know how he does it without cutting himself; practice, he supposes. Or maybe he’s just careful. “I guess… how long were you together?”  
“Seven years? Give or take. We met when I was nineteen.” Now that he’s talking, it’s easier than he thought it would be, or he’s starting off easy, but at any rate he keeps going, to both of their surprises. “She was visiting the academy for, I don’t know, an inspection or something. And then she waited around until I was done with training for the day and asked me out for a drink, and at that point, y’know, I liked the attention, and it wasn’t like I was going to pass up a free drink, so. Uh. I moved in with her a few months later. I don’t remember a lot of the details. I guess I blocked some of it out, and I was also high, like, ninety percent of the time back then. But I know things started getting bad pretty soon after I moved in with her. Not bad enough that I was scared, or anything, I think we just fought a lot. And then, uh—” Juno swallows hard. Then he does it again. Then he finds a loose thread on the hem of his sweatshirt and starts pulling.  
“Would you like to stop?”  
“Hm? No, it’s fine. Uh, then Ben died. You already knew that part, though. And after that- that’s when everything got really bad. I don’t think I left the apartment for two months, or something. I just couldn’t… I couldn’t. And then when I was coming out of it, I just wanted to… I wanted something to happen, I guess. I don’t know. But I started picking fights. Fucking up more often, in ways that she’d notice. And that’s when things with her got bad— like, putting me in the hospital every couple months bad. And then to make up for it, she’d, like, buy me drugs and take me to parties and shit, so that’s when all of that hit the fan, too, and then I just… stayed like that for a while, I guess. Mick kept telling me to get out, but I ignored him. Plus, I mean Diamond didn’t like me talking to him that much. I wasn’t scared to leave, or anything, I just didn’t really feel like I had to.”  
“You talk about it like you think it was your fault,” Nureyev says slowly. His words have more space between them than usual. Juno doesn’t really know what to make of that. Is he angry? He doesn’t look angry, at least not in a way Juno recognizes, but it’s still a possibility.  
“I guess it wasn’t? It probably wasn’t. It’s just that, Diamond was the worst, sure, but she wasn’t the first person I’ve dated who hit me, and she wasn’t the last, and then there’s my mom, and I mean, you add it all up, and the common ground they’ve got is me. Which sounds- I know how it sounds, okay? But it’s really easy to think like that. And when you’ve gotta keep convincing yourself that staying with someone is the right decision- it’s really easy, is what I’m saying.”  
“I’m sorry, Juno.”  
“Yeah.”  
“I don’t know how helpful this is, but I am absolutely certain it wasn’t your fault.”  
“Thanks.” Juno’s hands hurt. Looking down, he realizes he’s worn his fingertips raw worrying the thread between them. Figures. He drops it on the floor.   
“And you don’t have to deal with this alone. I’m here, and I’m not going to hurt you.”  
“I—” he looks at Nureyev, at his hands, at the rings on his fingers “—would love to believe you.”  
“But you don’t.” He says it half like a question and half like he’s stating a fact.  
“It’s not that I think you want to. I don’t even really think you’re going to, I guess. It’s just that no one’s ever not hurt me. And I can’t just assume that you’re the exception. I love you, and honestly this is the longest anyone’s ever made it without… snapping. But a pretty big part of me is still waiting for the day you finally get mad enough to hit me or yell at me or something.”  
Nureyev nods a few times, takes a ragged breath.  
“I’m sorry. That’s definitely not what you wanted to hear.”  
“It’s okay. You haven’t done anything wrong. I’m— thank you. For telling me. Is there anything I can do help… convince you otherwise?”  
“I don’t know. I’ll tell you. If I think of something. But I can’t right now. I think I’m done talking.”  
“Okay.” Nureyev picks up the untouched bowls of soup and stands up slowly. Juno can tell he’s trying not to make any sudden movements, and he hates it, but he hates that it’s helping even more.   
He pauses in the doorway. “Would you like me to come back and spend the night here again?”  
“Not tonight.” Juno stares at the ground so he doesn’t have to see Nureyev’s reaction.  
“Alright.” Then, softer: “I love you.”  
“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeehaw  
> leave a comment if you'd like!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhhh this chapter is all over the place because i wrote it at 2 am but all the places are good so enjoy  
> side note if the sort-of-sexy parts are really awkward it's bc i've never written anything remotely close to this before and i am Out Of My Comfort Zone so i'm sorry if it's hard to read or doesn't make sense i promise it's only like 2 paragraphs
> 
> trigger warnings for this chapter include:  
> -vague references to past child abuse  
> -invalidation of boundaries (juno is invalidating his own boundaries)  
> -discussions of past r@pe/assault

The next morning Juno spends so long in the shower that he burns through the Carte Blanche’s entire hot water heater and he puts on a new shirt for the first time since he’d taken off his suit after the party. The suit is still lying like a dead thing in the corner of his room, so he hangs it in the back of his closet where he won’t have to see it until he moves out of the room. He doesn’t feel better, not by a long shot, but if he’s got the energy to get out of bed and if he’s not scared to be anywhere outside his room he might as well take advantage of it.  
He heads to the kitchen, bracing himself against the unwanted attention he knows is coming. It’s always there when he starts climbing out of a rock bottom: the “look who decided to show up for work today's and the sympathetic smiles and the questions about where he’d been and how he’s feeling and what happened and what changed. Rita had thrown him a party when he’d come back from rehab. It had only been her and Mick, and Juno can’t say he didn’t appreciate it, but being looked at just feels like being watched or scrutinized and it’s the last thing he needs right now.  
But when he walks in, with a deep breath and his fingers drumming nervously against his leg, everything is… normal. Even after the other crew members notice he’s there. He makes it to the coffee pot without so much as a “good morning.” The only person who acknowledges him is Vespa.  
“Hey, Steel, did you use all the hot water this morning?”  
“Maybe.”  
“What the hell took you so long? You’re, like, a foot shorter than everyone else, it should take you the least amount of time. If Ransom was in there with you, I hope you at least cleaned up.”  
“First of all, gross. Second, if he had been, why would we have to clean up? We would’ve been in the shower already.”  
Nureyev is turning red under his makeup. “I would just like to say that I’ve been in here all morning.”  
“Third, why do you even care? You look like you haven’t showered in twenty years, clearly it doesn’t concern you.”  
The corner of Vespa’s mouth twitches up in a smile “I wish Jet had left you in that desert.”  
Juno raises his coffee mug like he’s giving a toast. “I wish that building had been a few stories taller.”  
“All right, I think that’s quite enough for one morning, don’t you? Sit down, Juno, we’ve got some catching up to do.”

And that’s it. He’s back. For the most part. Buddy goes over her plans for the next heist with him and gives him a floor plan to memorize. “We can’t rely on Ransom for this kind thing every time, darling,” she says, so he spends the rest of the day in the kitchen working his way through blueprints and the snacks that Rita brings him every time she catches a free moment. It makes him a little nervous— he doesn’t like being thought about, even if it’s good thoughts— but he thanks her anyway, and it stops him from having to remember to eat on his own. And obviously he’d never ask her to stop.  
Vespa comes in at some point to start making dinner. She does everything quickly, and loudly; slamming cabinet doors, throwing dishes onto the counter, even the way she lights the stove is loud, somehow. Juno closes his eyes and tries to run through the layout of the Curemother’s storage facility again, but all of a sudden all he can picture is his Oldtown apartment. He shakes his head, trying to clear it. Water starts boiling on the stove and he almost jumps out of his skin. Get it together, Steel. If he leaves Vespa will think it’s because of her (it is, but it’s not), and it’s not like he can ask her to move quieter. It’s a stupid request, and he can manage. Everyone’s just spent the last week bending over backwards for him, and now that it’s over, he can’t ask for anything else. Not for a long time, at least. Not unless he wants them to be even more mad at him than they already are, think less of him than they already do.  
“It’s alright, Steel. You’ll learn how to think eventually.”  
“Huh?” Juno opens his eyes and realizes he’s been squeezing them shut, hard, and that his hands are shaking around his grip on the floor plans. “Oh, no, I’m just preparing myself for your cooking.”  
“I’m a great cook. Didn’t you have any of the shit I made last week?”  
“Can’t say that I did.”  
“Well—”  
“Can’t say that I want to, either.”  
“Bitch.”  
Juno sticks his tongue out at her and leans back in his chair. He’s nowhere near done— memorization’s never come easy to him, if his test scores in school were any indication, and even if it had been, he still can’t focus as well as he usually can, and being outside his room still puts him a little on edge. But there’s no way he’s going to make any more progress today. Especially not now that everyone else is starting to finish up their jobs for the day, and they’re walking up and down the hallways and talking to each other and Juno can hear all of it and he’s sure that they’re talking about him, about how much of a liability he’s been since the art heist.  
No, of course that’s not what they’re saying. It’s selfish to think so; they’ve got better things to think about. Even so, Juno can’t shake the idea any more than he can shake the tension that’s been creeping into his spine for the last twenty minutes, any more than he can stop his heart from skipping a beat every time Vespa opens the fridge. He keeps his eyes glued on her while she works. It doesn’t really make him any less nervous, but knowing where she is and what she’s doing is better than the alternative.   
Until she notices, anyway. “What the fuck are you staring at, Steel?” She turns toward him suddenly, gesturing angrily with the fork in her hand. Juno has to grip the edge of the table to keep himself from running away.  
“Nothing. Just… love watching you work.”  
Vespa growls.  
“No, really. You’re an artist. I’ve never seen this kind of skill.” His voice cracks a few times. He hopes she doesn’t notice.  
“If you have such a problem with the way I make spaghetti, you can come do it yourself.”  
“Mista Steeeeeel! I know that it’s your turn to pick the stream for tonight, but I was really hopin’ you’d say I can pick it instead, because I just remembered that I brought Return of the Robot Vampire and you liked it when I showed it to you, plus you know how pretty the main robot gal is, and—”  
“You can pick the stream, Rita.”  
“Thank you, boss!”   
“Steel might not make it to stream night, anyway,” Vespa says from the stove. “I’m poisoning his food.”  
Rita sits down and starts talking. It doesn’t seem like she plans on stopping anytime soon, either. Juno nods along and lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, settles into the rise and fall of her voice. He still tenses every time Vespa moves too quickly, though. He’s got to learn how to do a better job of ignoring it. It’s an old habit, one he picked up living with Sarah. And old habits die hard, he knows that better than anyone, but they have to die eventually. 

Two hours later he’s sandwiched between the armrest of the Carte Blanche’s ratty thirdhand couch and Nureyev, trying to pay attention to both the movie and Jet and Rita’s conversation about the existence of real robot vampires. After a few minutes he gives up and stares out the window instead, into the permanent night sky he’s spent the last half a year floating through. It hurts, a little; every time he thinks he’s gotten far enough away to really move on something pulls him back. He knows it’s not about physical distance, but it should be, shouldn’t it? When he was younger he used to talk about leaving Mars all the time. He’d stay up in his room with Ben, or on the roof with Mick and Sasha, and he’d explain exactly how he was going to find the money for his ticket out, how he was going to find a different planet where the people didn’t know him and the rent was cheap and no one was ever going to hear from him again. Even then he’d known it wasn’t going to fix everything, but he’d been pretty sure it would fix most of it.   
A quiet hand on his shoulder pulls Juno out of his thoughts. Nureyev is looking at him like looking at him is the easiest thing in the world. “Can I play with your hair?”  
“Sure,” Juno says automatically, shifting so that they’re both at a better angle for it. A few seconds later he feels his fingertips running along his scalp. Nureyev keeps his nails short; it’s one of the things Juno likes about him.  
Nureyev asks about everything. He’s careful; he’d been careful even before Juno had fallen apart in front of him. That night at the hotel he hadn’t done anything without asking. Juno’s never had that before, and he’s not sure what to do with it. Usually he defaults to saying yes to everything, because fuck if he knows what he wants, but if Nureyev’s asking it means he wants it.   
The movie drones on. After another few minutes Peter leans down and presses his mouth against Juno’s ear. “Do you want to go back to your room?”  
Something in his voice runs down his spine and into his chest. “Yes,” he whispers, and he’s sure he means that. He sits up and looks at the others; Buddy’s asleep and Vespa’s gone, and Jet and Rita are so absorbed in their argument that they’ll barely notice if two more people go missing.

The door to Juno’s room has barely closed before Nureyev’s pushed him up against it, fingers spread against his chest, kissing him with a kind of urgency that he can’t help but match. He hooks a finger through one of the belt loops on Nureyev’s skirt and pulls him closer. He laughs at that, pulling back for a second, his breath warm against Juno’s face. Then he’s back before Juno has the chance to bring him back, and his hands are moving, leaving trails of heat in their wake, and he’s guiding them across the room.   
Nureyev pushes Juno onto his bed and climbs on top of him. He stays there for a moment, kneeling over him, hungry-eyed. “God, you’re beautiful.”  
Juno reaches up and grabs him by the shirt collar, dragging him down until they’re pressed together again. His hands find Juno’s face, strong fingers combing through his hair and running down his jaw.  
Then Nureyev starts to work his way downward, and for half a second one of his hands is around Juno’s throat, and suddenly all he can see is the ceiling of Diamond’s apartment and all he can think about are the years’ worth of healed bruises and hot showers he took in the middle of the night. He feels himself skidding to a halt, going stiff under his touch. Not tonight. Not when he’s doing better. Get it together. He takes a deep breath and blinks hard, focuses on the way Nureyev looks in the half-light of his bedroom. It’s enough to bring him back, but now Peter’s backed away, watching him intently, and they’re not touching at all.  
“Why’d you stop?” Juno asks.  
“You went somewhere else for a moment, I was waiting for you to come back to see if you wanted to keep going.”  
“... Okay.”  
“Do you? Want to keep going?”  
“Yeah. I- yeah.”  
Nureyev smiles and gets back to work, his teeth and tongue skating across Juno’s collarbones, his fingers moving to unbutton his pants. Juno starts undoing the clasps that run up the back of Nureyev’s shirt, but he can’t shake the question. Because he’s not sure if he wants to keep going, not really, but he can’t just call it off, especially after he’s been so distant for the past week. He doesn’t want to think about whether he should’ve said no, but Nureyev brought it up and now it’s eating at him.   
“You don’t have to ask if everything’s okay all the time, you know.”  
“If there’s things I don’t need to ask about, we can talk about it later,” Nureyev breathes.  
“No, I mean-” Juno lifts his chin up and pulls him into a long kiss “- I jus’ wanna make you happy. I could never say no to you.”  
Suddenly the distance between them is back, and Nureyev has pulled hands away. “Love, I don’t know if that was genuine or if you were just trying to be sexy, but either way I don’t think I liked it very much.”  
“I’m sorry.”  
“You can say no to me, you know. That’s why I ask.”  
“I know, I just…” Juno sighs. “Is this, like, a conversation now?”  
“I think it has to be.”  
“Okay. Sorry.” He sits up and pulls his shirt down. “It’s just that, if you want something, I’m not just gonna not give it to you. I’m not gonna be a bad girlfriend.”  
“That doesn’t make you a bad girlfriend, that just makes you a person. And all I actually want is for both of us to feel comfortable, which isn’t going to happen if you’re scared to say no and I’m scared that you were lying when you said yes.”  
“But you don’t have to worry about it, I just said it’s fine.”  
“It isn’t.”  
“Why not?”  
“Juno, if-” Nureyev runs a hand over his face “-if you don’t want to fuck and we do it anyway, that’s assault. And, call me crazy, I don’t actually want to assault someone I’m in love with.”  
“That’s not what I’d call it.”  
“What would you call it?”  
“Compromise. You know, you want something, and maybe I don’t, but we do it anyway, and then later we do something you don’t wanna do.” Juno’s heart is beating somewhere inside the pit of his stomach.  
“Compromise,” Nureyev repeats. He stands up and walks around to the foot of the bed.  
“Are you mad at me?”  
“No. Absolutely not.” He inhales sharply, and when he speaks again his voice is softer. “I’m just- has that ever worked out before? Have you ever had sex when the other person didn’t want to? I mean, was it ever your idea?”  
“I- oh.” There had always been things, with Diamond, that Juno knew were bad (they’d never been bad enough to be inexcusable, obviously, up until the end, but he’d still known that other people would’ve deserved better). But then there had been things that made sense: when he forgot their anniversary, she’d been right to get mad. She shouldn’t’ve cracked so many of his ribs, sure, but the anger was normal. Juno did most of the housework because he was home more often, and Diamond filed both of their taxes every year because she hadn’t flunked her high-school algebra classes. Certain things had made sense. And this had always been one of them. Now that Nureyev’s spelling it out for him, standing uncharacteristically still at the end of the bed, he gets it. He almost wishes that it had never come up, because despite everything he still keeps a mental list of everything Diamond did right, to remind himself he wasn’t completely stupid for staying, and that list just got a little shorter.  
“I should’ve killed her when I had the chance.”  
Juno thinks for a moment, waits until he’s gotten past his default of defending her before he answers: “Maybe.”  
“You can always tell me no, love.”  
“It might… take a while.”  
Nureyev nods. “I know.”  
“Okay.”  
“Do you want me to leave?”  
Juno rubs his eye. His fingers come back wet. “No. Come back. But, uh, don’t…” the words catch in his throat.  
“I won’t,” he says. He climbs back into bed, but stays close enough to the edge that he couldn’t touch him by accident.   
Juno lies back down and rolls onto his side so he’s facing the window. Outside, space stretches out around them, and Mars gets further and further away. He can’t help wondering when it’ll finally be far enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i like to call this chapter "vespa and juno love each other but their love language is death threats"  
> leave a comment if you'd like! + my tumblr and tiktok are the same username if you'd like to cheer urself up with some shitposts


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